CBS This Morning

A mob of people erratically riding motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) along Florida highways said they were honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s illegal to ride dirt bikes and ATVs on those roads, but highway patrol said it couldn’t chase after the reckless riders. It’s against department policy to pursue scofflaws over traffic violations and they feared pursuing the riders would endanger more lives, reports CBS News correspondent Vicente Arenas.

Organizers said they’d been planning the ride for months, using social media sites as a virtual bulletin board to gather a crowd from across the East Coast.

They rode down highways and freeways at speeds up to 70 mph performing dangerous stunts and disrupting rush-hour traffic. There were easily hundreds of riders in this swarm, some banding together after the city’s Martin Luther King Jr. parade.

The message of Monday’s ride was “Bikes up, guns down.”

And even though the riders were pushing a message of peace, police said they broke the law.

“There’s less chance of being stopped, less chance of being caught and punished if you’re with a large group that overwhelms the capacity of law enforcement to intervene,” sociologist Jeffrey Butts said.

The group ride trend has become, at times, menacing, resulting in confrontations with police officers and other drivers.